Cassini sheds light on Saturn's 30- and 300-year mysteries

[nsane.forums]

This week, data from NASA's Cassini probe has shed light on a couple of the stranger features of Saturn, providing answers to questions that were raised years ago. In terms of the planet itself, Cassini has spotted strange hexagonal patterns in the clouds near the north pole that were observed for the first and only time 30 years ago, when the Voyager probes swung by the planet. And researchers have used Cassini data to produce what they think are satisfying models for the strange coloration of Saturn's moon Iapetus, something that was first noted over three centuries ago—by Cassini himself.

First, Iapetus, which would look like a fairly typical moon if it weren't for a rather distinctive feature: the face that leads it around its orbit is about 10 times darker than its trailing face. This difference is so pronounced that Cassini himself reported it all the way back in 1677—both of today's papers about the moon cite his paper in the the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (volume 12, page 831, for those inclined to look it up). In Arthur C. Clarke's book 2001: A Space Odyssey, the moon's bright side was created by an alien civilization as a way of drawing the intention of any intelligent life.

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[tonyblair]

Thanks News Bot for this article :)